We are requesting funds to support a Digital Imaging Core, part of a recently established Inner Ear Consortium whose goal is to understand how the auditory and vestibular systems of the inner ear develop, function, and recover after damage. The Digital Imaging Core supports this goal by studying, using wide-filed and confocal microscopy, cell morphology, cytoplasmic organelles, intracellular indicators, and the expression of genes and proteins necessary for the development, function, and recovery of the inner ear. It encourages, through prioritization of core requests, pilot projects that involve multiple investigators or develop new techniques of interest to inner ear scientists. The core, physically located at Central Institute for the Deaf (CID), is intended to be a central resource for inner ear scientists interested in utilizing digital imaging technology. Towards this end, it is staffed by a full-time Core Technician and maintains a confocal laser scanning microscope with both visible and infrared lasers, upright and inverted fluorescent microscopes, and a graphics preparation room equipped with three graphic workstations, film recorder, flatbed scanner, color printers, digital projector system, and imaging software. The Digital Imaging Core helps inner ear scientists to acquire high quality digital images, evaluate and interpret these images, process these images to enhance desired features, and prepare these images for display or presentation. A semi-annual training workshop in digital imaging technology, aimed at novice and inexperienced core users, and a monthly journal club, aimed at residents, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research technicians, focuses on methodological issues and the application of digital imaging technology to inner ear research. The Digital Imaging Core assists users of the Electron Microscopy and Gene Expression Cores to analyze, edit, and display digital images acquired in these facilities. It also works with the Electronics Services Core to maintain web pages describing the Inner Ear Consortium and its core facilities, to help inner ear scientists to develop their own laboratory web pages, and to increase the user-friendliness of imaging hardware and software.